Wealth Screening Demystified

How to Use Data to Find Your Best Major Gift Prospects

Wealth screening is one of those tools that development officers tend to either over-rely on or ignore entirely. Both instincts need a deeper look.

Over-reliance looks like this: a fundraiser gets a prospect report back from DonorSearch showing a $2 million capacity rating on a longtime annual fund donor and immediately starts treating them as a major gift prospect, without a single qualifying conversation.

They rush cultivation, the donor feels pressured, and the relationship suffers.

Ignoring it looks like this: a development director maintains a 300-person prospect list entirely from memory and board relationships, never uses any wealth screening tool, and misses a cluster of highly capable donors who’ve been quietly writing five-figure checks to peer organizations for years.

The Cotswolds © Tonya Hennessey

The right relationship with wealth screening is somewhere in the middle: it’s a powerful prioritization tool that tells you where to focus your limited cultivation time—not a replacement for human judgment, relationship, and the qualification conversation.

Here’s how to use it well.